When the guys at Search Marketing Standard magazine emailed me asking for my feedback on a new venture they were about to launch, I was intrigued. Would I review the brand new site and provide my honest feedback? “Sure”, I said, “What’s the concept?”
“Well”, they said, “SEMCompare is a ratings and review site covering SEM agencies. The idea behind the site is to encourage clients to submit reviews on any of the SEM agencies they’ve worked with – good and bad.”
“Uh Oh”, I thought and the skepticism started to flow. After a few minutes of browsing the site, my skepticism turned to concern and my opinion of the site was confirmed: Trouble. With a capital T.
You see, back in 2001, Marketing Sherpa published the first issue of their Buyer’s Guide to SEO Firms. They’ve since changed the model, but the launch issue used a rating system where they gave the SEO companies (including my own) a score rating based on client reviews, search rankings achieved and their internal measure of SEO tactics used by the companies. This prompted some legal action by one or more firms reviewed within the Guide. To me, the SEMCompare site sounded like a very similar concept that could have the same disastrous outcome.
The problem with the concept of rating SEM firms is that there are no published search industry standards that SEM agencies are required to meet and no formal accreditation body imposing such standards. There are certainly de facto or unspoken industry standards that are widely accepted as a benchmark, but no governing body yet exists to regulate the implementation of such standards. As such, a site or service that imposes a rating system is by default claiming a standards yardstick by which all SEM firms should be measured – dangerous territory indeed!
Giving consumers the power to anonymously rate SEM firms opens up another can of worms: how to keep the system free of corruption by SEM firms and disgruntled consumers alike? I couldn’t believe my friends at SMS would open themselves up to so much potential grief, so I drafted some questions about the site and sent them off for a response.
Here are my questions and the answers I received from Matt Alland, Business Development Director for SEMCompare:
1) What prompted you to launch such a site?
Thus far, choosing an SEM company has been a confusing process, especially for those who are completely new to search engine marketing. There really hasn’t been a clear way for consumers to accurately review companies. While there have been some basic independent reviews of select SEM firms, there hasn’t been a more widely accepted industry standard. Having talked to a lot of people looking for a better way to find and compare SEM companies, we decided to create SEMCompare, and offer a new much needed service to this industry.
2) How is the site any different to the Better Business Bureau or Consumer Advocacy groups?
In many ways, we function in a similar fashion, but not precisely. While users submitting reviews are able to rank companies, we’re less concerned about the precise numbers, and put more emphasis on the reviews themselves – why a company did or did not work for a certain business or individual. Our goal is to be a launching pad for people starting their search for SEM companies, and a point of research. I don’t think our focus is to try and become a “scam alert” type site – we encourage users to do additional research on their own and look for those warning signs. Rather we hope people will use SEMCompare to find companies that work for their specific needs.
3) How do you prevent conflict of interest issues and manipulation of the system by SEM agencies posing as consumers?
We do a variety of things internally. I can’t mention everything, but we definitely do IP tracking, cookie tracking, and keep close tabs on email addresses, names, and trends in reviews. If we see suspicious spikes or unusual activity we make note of it and may deny posting those highly questionable reviews as a result. We will sometimes contact the reviewer themselves, and we always read over every review before it goes live to the site.
4) How do you protect SEM agencies from consumers who may have an axe to grind with a particular SEM staff member?
Once again, that goes into a lot of the review tracking techniques we use. If certain trends seem suspicious or unusual we take that into account. These are the same kinds of challenges any review site must go through, so luckily there are a lot of resources at our disposal at this point in time to combat deceptive or faulty reviews. And as a final note, we always have a flagging opportunity so people are able to dispute specific reviews deemed unfair. However, the site does not protect companies from bad reviews and it is not our job to take those down just because a company disagrees with it. Our main job is to prevent companies from posting reviews themselves and from reckless individuals looking to disrupt competition with floods of bad reviews.
5) Marketing Sherpa published a Buyer’s Guide to SEM Firms that rated SEM firms and this prompted some legal action by one or more of the firms within the Guide. How do you resolve to avoid similar legal problems?
We don’t review companies at SEMCompare, but rather provide the platform for people to do so. While we try to weed out as many suspicious reviews as we can, at the end of the day we can’t really endorse or condone reviews on the site. We would expect that people will use their own sensibilities, look into the reviews and follow up with companies themselves.
Despite a number of challenges and imperfections that are bound to exist for this type of site, we’re excited to be the first to really take on this concept fully. Ultimately, the benefits of having an industry accepted review site outweigh the challenges that exist. Review sites are pivotal in so many industries now: automobiles, cameras, consumer electronics, as well as industries like web hosting and web design. SEM is certainly a unique industry, but the same core elements of a review site remain the same, and people’s concerns are no different than with any review site that has existed before us.
Ultimately, we’re excited about the opportunity SEMCompare will be able to offer to consumers, giving people a new means to share their experiences and learn more about the differences between companies instead of randomly selecting providers. This is something the industry thus far has not had, and a service like this offers a chance to simplify and standardize the process of comparing the hundreds of companies out there.
Something from the above exchange triggered a huge red flag for me: “At the end of the day we can’t really endorse or condone reviews on the site.” What? So you aren’t endorsing your own site content? Then why bother creating a site around such content at all? Unless the site’s primary goal is to sell magazine advertising to SEM firms with reputations tarnished by bad reviews? Things that make you go hmmmm.
SEMCompare claim to have already received hundreds of reviews with over 150 SEM companies evaluated. Some of the companies reviewed have an already litigious history, which is alarming. Even more concerning is that a few of the negative reviews are for companies that I’m very familiar with and that have excellent and ethical reputations in the industry, making the true motivations of reviewers seem highly suspicious. I can’t help thinking that many of the reviews I read would make legal departments trigger happy.
Here are some sample negative reviews taken from the site yesterday:
“Paid over $19,000 over 9 months and our natural traffic declined by 30%. They setup duplicate pages (static versions of our dynamic content) and we were penalized by Google. “
“They never (not once) delivered on expectations, and most of their deliverables were sub par. I came to find out late in our relationship that they outsourced the majority of work that our company outsourced to them…thus they were nothing more than a parasitic middleman.”
“The only thing they were good at was stealing my money… I think they even got me banned from Google for three months for using black hat techniques.”
“Their sales team was absolutely relentless in trying to get more money from us. Even when I was complaining that deadlines were being missed, they would try to sell me something. There is no way on earth that I’d recommend this company to anyone.”
“In summary, [company name removed] misrepresented their expertise, their technology, and showed no integrity as they breached their contract, refunding nothing to us. I strongly warn anyone and everyone to avoid spending any resources with this organization. Take your money and burn it. You’ll get more satisfaction from that experience than with working with [company name removed] .”
All I can say is OUCH. Maybe the guys will prove me wrong, but it’s my prediction that this time next year the headaches caused by SEMCompare will see it self-implode.
[…] comparison review site sponsored by Search Marketing Standard magazine. Today, Kalena Jordan offers her impressions of the site and she says it spells nothing but trouble. Is she […]
It’s a good idea but for an SEM agency in should not be a big problem to fake some votes or reviews without being caught. And I’m rather sure that some people will try to rate themselves to SEM heaven and discredit others.
SEMCompare is just a lead generation site that is going to be abused by every SEO on the planet. Without any controls it will become useless in just a few months.
Over on Sphinn (http://sphinn.com/story/37550) where your article is posted, Nick Wilsdon said: “Also, please give plenty of thought to allowing companies to reply to critics. Preferably at a comment by comment level.”
And Boris from SEM responded with: “@NickWilson – providing the companies with an ability to respond to comments is definitely something that we plan on integrating in the near future. It’s been on our agenda since the beginning, but it will just take a bit of time to get that developed.”
I got the same email you did and responded with the exact same concern that NickW said above.
But…my response from Boris was quite different so I’m glad to see they’ve taken the issue of SEO’s being able to respond to negative comments into consideration and plan to implement it.
Unhappy clients become unhappy for a lot of reasons and not always because they were “wronged”. There’s two sides to all stories and more times than not issues we have with clients are a result of things they’ve not done. I’ve even had one bounce checks and become irate when we stop services. Now I ask – if he left a comment do you really think he’s going to tell people we stopped working on his site because he’s a payment deadbeat?
Last point – while I’m sure the people at SEM will do what they can to monitor email addresses, that’s all done electronically. Meaning – they can’t read and review every single comment that comes in so there are going to be comments that make it by their review system.
They’ll be posted and then what?
Kalena – I completely agree, this sounds like trouble. For starters, it’s simply human nature that people are far more likely to remember — and write about — negative experiences than positive ones.
What would be really useful, to both agencies and their clients, is some sort of SEM benchmarking service. I’m not sure how granular this could get, but let’s say I have a client offering a high value / high price strategic enterprise service; not the best fit for a search campaign, but they’d like to try it. What sort of results (click-throughs and conversions) should they expect? What level of results should I expect to achieve for them?
Or this: a client is considering different types of incentive for response, perhaps a white paper, free trial and webinar registration. A webinar registration form is likely to convert at a lower rate than a white paper download, but how much lower?
That type of data would be far more helpful to both buyers and providers in the SEM space than a review site that is unlikely to provide anyone with truly useful information.
@ Malte – yes, that is my biggest concern. Good intentions are one thing but the ability to control those gaming the system is quite another.
@ Debra – hmmm, interesting that you had a different response from Boris. Maybe the vendor commenting is something they have only just come around to? But even if they do integrate vendor feedback, it just becomes a “he said, she said” issue and flaming is likely to ensue. Re clients with a grudge – I had the same thoughts. We too have had payment deadbeats (love that term!) break our contract and then bad mouth us for ceasing the contracted services. UGH
@ Tom – Re the SEM benchmarking site – What a FAB idea! I really think you’re onto something. There’s a real need in this industry for a central repository of case studies, performance testing, algorithm experiments and achievable ROI benchmarks for PPC, SEO and other services. Kind of like Marketing Experiments, but tailored to the search industry. Care to build it? I can guarantee you endorsement from Search Engine College and a visit from every student!
Hi everyone,
Thank you for your feedback!
@Debra – just to clarify… the first thing I mentioned in my email to you was the fact that we’re considering adding in the near future the ability for SEM firms to respond to the reviews and present their side of the story. Isn’t that what I wrote to Nick, as well?
There were a few other things that I mentioned in the email, but our stance of this functionality did not change.
I just submitted a response on Sphinn regarding this feature (and a few others). Since it’s getting a bit late, I’ll just include a link here. If you have any more questions or concerns, I would be more than happy to address them:
http://sphinn.com/story/37550#c37835
Best!
Boris
@ Boris – thanks for stopping by and keeping everyone up to date with developments. I’m sorry if my post has resulted in negativity, but I’m also pleased to hear you have already taken the good and bad feedback on board re future site directions. Good for you!
Kalena,
No worries. I’m actually quite grateful to the post because it cleared up some of the internal debates we were having and led to a number of changes that I think will be quite beneficial for all.
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to respond to this post earlier. With all the discussions taking place and actual work that needs to be done, there are just not enough hours in the day – that’s why I’m posting at night now
Boris
[…] Jordan writes a blog about her concern over an SEM rating site called SEMCompare. She tells us that the Search Marketing Standard magazine has started this site […]
@Boris – No, your reply to Nick was different, you said “is definitely something that we plan on integrating”
It went from “thinking about” to “definitely” which is good to hear.
[…] and is brought to us by the same people who launched the Search Marketing Standard magazine. As Kalena noted, they already have a few negative reviews for known companies in the SEO/SEM industry. Here are a […]